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HTML Comments

Posted on: September 4, 2016 by Dimitar Ivanov

Some web developers prefer to use HTML comments
to document their code, others don't like it and not used it. What are the
real benefits of using HTML comments for a web application in practice? Is
it worth to use comments in general?

What is HTML comment?

Comment is a code or text content enclosed in <!-- and
--> which are ignored by browsers, i.e. not displayed and
not visible by end-users.

<!-- This is a comment -->

Why devs use HTML comments?

increases code readability

helps other people understand your code

for debugging purposes

denote closing tag

What are the negatives of HTML comments?

worsens the UX - even not visible, the
HTML comments are part of the DOM tree and increase the number of DOM
elements. This, in turn, affects the quickness and
responsiveness, also leads to slower CSS
selectors and DOM manipulation.

hurts SEO - an extensive use of HTML
comments would increase the size of a page in bytes, which
affects loading time, which is a ranking
factor in SERP. Also, worsens the Text to HTML ratio.

loss of bandwidth - more bytes leads
to more traffic.

Conclusion

In general, it's totally OK to use HTML comments. But I've seen websites
with HTML comments denotes closing tags, that
results in significant increase of page size up to 30%. So, if you aim to
have a quick and responsive web app, and to gain an "A" grade for
web performance, as well as to rank better in
SERP - I've highly recommend staying away from the extensive use of comments.

Tell me your thoughts about HTML comments
by leaving a comment below. Sharing this article would be great. Thanks for
reading.

Dimitar Ivanov

Dimitar Ivanov is a senior LAMP developer, javascript engineer, web performance-obsessed.
He is programming since 2003 and loves to build web applications.
You can find him on Twitter,
LinkedIn and
GitHub.

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